Warning over future compatibility of electronic patient records

Patient safety and practitioners’ careers could be put at risk in future if open industry standard formats are not adopted by clinical record software developers,  Topcon Medical GB managing director Andrew Yorke has warned.

‘This is the hidden, dark side of the revolution that we are now seeing in the recording of clinical data,’ said Yorke, whose company distributes practice management and clinical records system, i-Clarity.

He said he had become increasingly concerned that concerned that practitioners were committing their clinical data to computer systems, without any guarantees that the data would be accessible in future.